I took out the #7 piston to find out what would have caused the uneven wear & gouge down the wall, but to my surprise, I found nothing wrong. The rings look great and the wrist pin & clips look good too. The bearings also have very little wear on them. My only conclusion is that someone must have put this motor together and just ignored that bad cylinder wall to run it as is. I'm not sure I want to find out how bad it runs with it like that so I am going to tear it apart and sleeve it.

Yeah, it's not great, but I can't really complain since I picked up this mostly complete motor with transmission for $1100. You can't really touch a 392 for that amount anymore. But I don't like the looks of these pistons. Looks like really lame compression ratio. I may run them with 331 heads which will boost it up 1 point, or install forged high compression pistons I have laying around. I haven't decided yet. The forged pistons have aluminum rods on them that I ran in my Barracuda during high school....

I don't understand how that happens. Also I do see a fair amount of cheap blocks running around. The gouge is too deep to bore it out?

that's a good price, kind of like me. I got my whole car for 3500$ with a good hemi(non running) but had very low wear and turned over so I rebuilt it. Salvaged what I could from the wagon.(took the power steering, power brakes, front end, misc parts...

This car is getting a frame-off job. Hope to get the frame ground, sanded & painted quickly & transferred to the body so I don't have issues with the neighborhood. But I will take some time to replace the brake & fuel lines first. I am thinking of following Mike2nd's lead and using '57 Chevy poly body mounts to replace the rubber ones.

...and just to remind myself, I need to remember to clean up the T-bar adjuster bolts & replace the shocks before it happens to make those tasks much easier than they would be with the body in place. I am also seriously considering welding up the exhaust first too, but I don't know if I can ensure it would work out once the body, fuel tank & drivetrain came into place.

Yeah, I'm in a hurry to get it swapped too, so I can't afford the body-off convenience that I would like. I paid my son to grind the frame and get it ready to paint. He did a good job. I only had to clean up a couple of areas afterward. I couldn't attach the shocks because they aren't quite long enough when fully extended and I don't have enough weight to compress the springs so this will have to do until I get the body back onto it. I just need to allow the paint to dry so I can install the new lines.

wow that was quick... presto painted frame! looks great. Run your brake line and fuel line. How is your underbody?

I spent a ton of time getting that 100%... little issues all over but I got them all.

I protected mine so you cant get water sitting anywhere anymore. Like the trunk support brackets(i seam sealed the edges but left the drain holes so water wont wick up back there) and then coated the whole thing.

My frame has a lot of crud collected inside it at the bottom of the downturn before the axle. I am thinking of drilling a large drain hole in the bottom of it there to get it out and to prevent future issues. The body is really clean so there is very little, if any, rust repair to do on it. That's the good part. So just a little clean up, paint and it should be ready to go. But there is a dent that needs repair near a body mount that I will take care of before the body comes down.

These extended mounts were placed on one mount in the center of the body, in addition to rubber donuts. Underneath one of them, the frame mount had been hit and bent. I believe that caused a weird bend in the quarter panel that's going to be real fun to take out. I have no idea why they would jack up the car in the center like this. I couldn't remove them without cutting the bolt heads off. They're not going back in.

Yeah, no idea why or how they got there. Putting the body on the other frame, they hinder the body from sitting flat so it doesn't seem to like them there. Maybe the original frame was poorly made with the brackets too low? I can't figure it out now because I already scrapped that frame.

My wife and I discussed it along with the other suggestions that were made and decided that Mr. Hudson had a good eye for color. We like the darker green roof version because it really accentuates the lighter green color under it, so that's what we are going to go with on this. I was planning to paint the roof right away, but the C pillars are bent up quite a bit - some from the factory (like usual) and one from a previous owner. In addition, there is some welding required at the bottom of the seams as well as 3-4 deep rust pits that almost go through on the top of the roof that will require welding. Weird because the roof has almost all of it's original paint in great shape, but there was some tree? acid dropped onto it in places that rusted little balls that pitted quite deep into it.

That welding will likely set the headliner & insulation on fire so all that has to be removed before any of this work can happen. This car is rare for me, in that it's headliner is in pretty good shape still, so I don't feel inclined to pull it down yet. Long story short, I am just going to prime and seal the roof and save the welding & body work for another day. That means final paint on it will have to wait until I am ready to replace the headliner.

Great minds think alike! I am liking these color more and more. This is the current state of the car. The body is in place on the frame, but not bolted down yet. I did some surface rust removal on the fins and roof. I will try to get the roof in a solid coat of primer on my day off tomorrow. I also replaced the left rear window because it was broken. I was surprised to find that the pot metal frame at the bottom of the window was corroded quite badly. I had one from back east that was surprisingly in much better shape so I used that one to replace it. The front fenders are from my '57 New Yorker. This is a convenient place to store them out of my way and it makes the car look more complete than it is. The door molding is from a 4dr New Yorker so that's why it is a little short. I'm going to have to stitch some trim together to get it all there. I have a lot of work to do on it before I can put it together. Hopefully it won't take too long. I'm working on the rear brakes on the Coronet at the same time....not sure what's wrong with them yet.

I finished the Scarebird disc conversion on it this morning - except for the plumbing. Only 15" wheels for it now like my other cars. I also installed a set of KYB shocks on the front (not shown yet in picture).

Thanks Sid. I got the side trim installed on it. This side of the car has an outward dent in it that needs fixing, but I wanted to get the trim in place and all set up. I am using 4dr aluminum trim so I need to figure out what the best approach is to make it look more uniform at the junction. Welding them together sounds scary and epoxy doesn't sound like it would last. I am going to use 15" '59 Imperial hubcaps on it. I am thinking the gold gears in the center of the hubcaps will go well with the gold emblems to compliment each other.

I'm thinking of putting this '63 New Yorker emblem at the seat dip area. It seems to match the gold 'C" emblem style of the car and the seat dip position very well. I am not a fan of the embossed vinyl factory patterns here. They look cheap to me yet cost a fortune. So I am trying to come up with something that will look better.

I disassembled the firewall to begin prep for paint. The hole in the firewall for the shifter cable was butchered on this car - probably to remove the cable without removing the bracket on the end of it first. I welded in a patch today to fix it. There was also an extra screw hole just below it that I welded in. Came out nice and will require only a tiny amount of filler to blend in the edges of the weld to the rest of the firewall.

Nathan, great project i also have a 57 Newyorker 4 dr / ht i tinkering with. i wonder if you could help me change colors on a picture. my car is the same mint green you are using but white roof. i got this pic and wondered if you could change it